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We want our D TV! Fans to rally June 1 to tell Dodgers and TWC to cut it out

LAT Columnist Chris Erskine is (Dodger) blue that his home team isn't on tv this season, and he worries the standoff could last as long as it did in San Diego, where fans couldn't see the Padres for two years.John Rabe

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John Rabe talks with LA Times columnist Chris Erskine about the rally planned Sunday, June 1, to urge the Dodgers and Time Warner Cable to solve the TV snafu.

"More and more, this Dodgers TV fiasco is reading like a plot line that even Joseph Heller would have rejected as far too absurd — greed, smothered in shamelessness, dipped in irony." -- Chris Arskine, writing in the LA Times.

The vast majority of Dodger fans cannot watch their beloved team on TV because the team and TWC can't or won't come to an agreement with DirecTV to allow the satellite TV provider to air the games. It irks LA Times columnist Chris Erskine so much that his trim mustache bristles when he talks about the letters he gets from readers.

"First it was disbelief, then there was frustration, a sense of betrayal, now there's just anger. And people feel powerless," he said.

So Erskine is helping organize a rally that will start at the old cop bar The Short Stop, near Dodger Stadium.

"I said, well let's get together and make some noise and let them know that we haven't given up!" he said. He'd like people to bring cowbells and big signs, and he even jokes that there's a sale on pitchforks at Home Depot.

(Turns out it's technically a "manure spreader," which actually fits the bill when it comes to this situation.)

In his column, Erskine has tweaked baseball commissioner Bud Selig whose plan is to, "Aggressively stay on top of it and hope they get it settled."

"And what's really weird," Erskine said, "is that no civic leader has stood up and said what about the fans? What about the viewers? What about this land that the city of Los Angeles basically gave to the Dodgers to come out here in the first place? It's a civic treasure."

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